A new photo featuring Zachary Levi in costume as the titular lead of the upcoming film Shazam! has been released. However, as fans have noticed, the character’s red suit looks slightly different than it did in previously-released promotional material and the Comic-Con International trailer.
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One Reddit user directly asked director David Sandberg what exactly was happening with the costume, to which Sandberg actually replied, explaining why the suit was altered in the manner it was, as well as what other tweaks fans should expect ahead of the film’s 2019 release.
“Making suits is hard,” Sandberg. “Like painting a room you can look at little swatches all day but you won’t really see the effect until it’s done. The color of the finished suit didn’t look quite as expected in some lights (particularly daylight) which is on me since I decided to change fabric very late in prep and there wasn’t time for as many tests.”
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“I figured we’d just have to tweak it in post,” he continued. “The first image released though unfortunately didn’t have any post production done to it. That was right as we were putting the trailer together. I figured since that image was out there perhaps we shouldn’t stray too far from it in the trailer. Might be confusing. This image is closer to what I’m going for, but it’s all still a work in progress and we’ll see where we end up. No images (or the trailer) have the finished bolt effect either (it’s not going to be an extreme effect or anything but it’s not just a simple glow).”
With this in mind, it appears that a particular amount of consideration has gone into how Shazam’s outfit should look for the character’s big screen debut. Moreover, it appears the visible alterations thus far have simply come down to trying to maintain consistency in the promotional material while the actual production process continues. Like with most superhero films, we’ll simply have to wait to see how the finished product looks.
Arriving April 5, 2019, director David F. Sandberg’s Shazam! stars Asher Angel as Billy Batson, Zachary Levi as Shazam, Mark Strong as Dr. Thaddeus Sivana, Djimon Hounsou as an ancient wizard named Shazam, Grace Fulton as Mary Bromfield, Jack Dylan Grazer as Frederick “Freddy” Freeman, Ian Chen as Eugene Choi, Jovan Armand as Pedro Peña, Faithe Herman as Darla Dudley, Cooper Andrews as Victor Vásquez and Marta Milans as Rosa Vásquez.
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